Right Place at the Right Time

[Kristin Purdy <kristinpurdy at comcast dot net>]

Sometimes the methodical targeting of habitat and season will produce
birds you'd like to see, and sometimes success is based on the time
honored dumb-luck principle of being in the right place at the right time.
The latter principle seems to bless me more often than the former!

I scouted areas around Snow Basin this evening to methodically target
habitats for a future owl trip.  I pulled off the road at mile marker 1 on
new Snow Basin road just to listen.  I heard MacGillivray's Warblers
singing as I stepped out of the truck.  Both a male and a female responded
to pishing right away with inquisitive chipping and gave me lots of
opportunity to watch them.  Neon blue fluttering along the sunlit road
embankment attracted my attention to a male Mountain Bluebird.  He and his
mate foraged in the evening sun, and from the look of it, found some
mighty plump and tasty-looking (if you're a bluebird, anyway) morsels.  I
also saw and heard Green-tailed Towhee, Chipping Sparrow, Red-tailed Hawk,
Black-headed Grosbeak, Mourning Dove, American Robin, Hermit Thrush,
Warbling Vireo, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, a family of five chunky House
Wren exploring every hole, crack, and crevice in a dying aspen grove, a
breathtaking tourmaline blue Lazuli Bunting, and Yellow-rumped Warbler.

I wistfully listened to an Orange-crowned Warbler's twittering, drooping
call--wistful because my looks at this bird this year have been poor, and
no amount of effort has yielded much of a view.  What the heck, I decided
to pish for this one too, and promptly violated a critical rule of
pishing--pish near a perch.  Much to my surprise, the warbler responded
immediately and flew out from the brush toward me.  Just as he realized
there was no place to land except my head, he performed a fluttering,
10-foot arc around me and returned to the brush.  He and his lady
continued to hop on open branches and call in response to the pishing.
My wistfulness vanished as I watched them long enough to satisfy.

I returned my attention to the pair of bluebirds and watched them intently
across the road in the 8 pm sunlight.  Little did I realize how quiet I
was as I stood on the asphalt.  I heard a faint whirring and picking noise
behind me, and slowly turned to see...a Ruffed Grouse standing on a log
not 25 feet away.  When the grouse mounted the log, it had missed the
essential truth that I was not a tree.  I slowly raised my binoculars.
He did not detect my movement.  He pirouetted twice with black ruff
feathers puffed out and tail fanned, stretched his neck and bobbed, and
then hopped off the log and into grass, invisible.  The undulating seed
heads told me what route he took away from that log.

The male bluebird crossed the road to my side and landed on a snag 15 feet
in front of me.  His beak was loaded.  He slipped into the aspen copse
where the grouse had also disappeared.  I found the bluebird's nesting
cavity just as Daddy was leaving.  He swiped his beak on a branch a few
times, and then flew back to the sunny embankment.  I returned my
attention to the cavity to see the entrance entirely filled with a fluffy,
gray youngster, smacking its beak and showing appreciation for its dinner.

By the time I headed home the sun was long down.  A moose and her soft
brown calf loped at the reaches of my headlights and melted back into the
darkness.  Before I was off Snow Basin Road, two more cows loped over the
road in front of me, and a bull sporting his early-season palmate
"sprouts" hurried off into the anonymity of the night.

Kris

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